Strawberry Banana Melomel

Brewed on May 10th??, 2014

Recipe:
Started with 18lbs of Fresh Strawberries
22lbs of Crystallized Alfalfa Honey
2.75 gal of Spring Water

Yeast Nutrient Mix (1tsp Fermaid-k, 2tsp GoFerm) Recommended by Michael Fairbrother
3 packets of Lalvin 71B (two were just expired so I decided to use them with a newer one)
8lbs of Banana's will be added at Secondary

Started the day cutting up strawberries and running them through the food processor. Once that was done we had approximately 2 gals of Strawberry puree.

I rehydrated the yeast with GoFerm and Fermaid-K. Then Iput my little bucket with 30lbs of crystallized honey in the utility tub and filled it with hot water in hopes of turning the honey back into a liquid state. After 4 hours some of it thinned out but most of it was still a hardened chunk. There was no way I was going to be able to weigh 22lbs of it so I just took out 8 lbs and left it in another bucket for the next batch.

I added almost boiling water to the bucket of honey to get it to dissolve, this took a long time. Once I added 1 to 2 gallons to the bucket then transferred it over to bucket with puree. I think this bucket holds almost 8 gallons. I ended up with a 1/4" of space at the top, this became an issue once primary fermentation started. The puree got pushed into the airlock where it clogged and built up pressure. I ended up with a 2' stream of strawberry must coming out of my bucket. After clean up I split the batch into 2 buckets. I wasn't able to check the gravity because the thick puree, I thought my hydrometer and/or refractometer would give me skewed readings.

After pitching the yeast I added 3/4tsp of the Yeast Nutrient Mix.

As of 8-13-14, the Gravity is 1.012. The alcohol is very apparent and hot. This will take many months to mellow out. Decided not to add any bananas at this point, didn't like the ones I bought.